The Way
I have some thoughts regarding “Cease and Desist” from the Open Mic of Dec. 20 and would begin by saying I’m saddened and depressed by the endless, meaningless strife worldwide.
One may search for meaning through war and peace, violence and morality, yet history sadly rhymes or repeats. Witness today’s long line of nightmarish self-ordained characters whose imperious rhetoric speaks to ending suffering through more suffering and sacrifice of the many for the few.
There is a perversity with which modern society pontificates its pretense of rationality. The vast enculturation of our mythological and metaphysical past, that imaginative pantheon of capricious and vengeful gods still nourish us but at once confound reason.
The current historical transition of nations to this “New World Order” already demonstrates that it will be facilitated through fear, violent struggle, brutality and repression. Systems of law and morality wouldn’t exist without violence. They are two sides of the same coin. The law supports our Promethean prison industrial complex, and law begets violence through violence.
Cormac McCarthy wrote an American masterpiece, the historical fiction novel entitled Blood Meridian. I believe this quote is both a central theme and germane: “It makes no difference what men think of war… War endures… Ask what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.”
Leland Dennick
Sebastopol
